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Show house/ 444 My father continued. He was thankful for the growth of he family. I wondered whether he was speaking of Brian or of lint Elsa's/pregnancy or both. "There are so many hidden blessings in our troubled times," ie said. "If only we know how to partake of them. The time .s coming when we can a l l be free - pure and blameless before the Lord, if only we w i l l keep His commandments." He began to catalogue them: sins of s p i r i t , sins of flesh, the two are one. Fornication. He said nothing of my engagement. I was sick to my stomach, cata^paulted by a blazing roller-coaster chariot that I did not know how to stop. I gripped the edge of the t a b l e . Who i s he, anyway? I fumed. God? Does he think he i s God? And then I realized that this was a genuine question - one I must answer in my own mind, rather than asking i t of him. My father struck the perfect patriarchal image. I watched his gaze with habitual i n t e n s i t y as he spoke, his s i l v e r hair forming a halo, his eyes bright and impersonal as a beacon. They swept across me, and for a moment, I f e l t small and deflated - a jack-in-the-box sprung at the wrong moment. And then my separate visionsi(vhorled toward each other, attracted . magnetic prism, . ,, . , ^ ,-, , • to some central f\ speeding across the night blue skies of my l i f e , molecules of light flooding my solar plexis, gathering in a vast and noisy internal explosion which I was certain must be a heart attack, a premature stroke, a plutonium bomb. Through bringing ears, my f a t h e r ' s voice f i l t e r e d sporadically and fragile-timbred. I experienced something like a vision at that moment. I saw a city of c r y s t a l , a place of serenity and incredible light. |
